YUVA

Youth development

The YUVA programme aims at harnessing the enthusiasm and energy of youth towards socio-economic development of under privileged communities. The programme intends to develop these youth into community influencers/leaders who can bring awareness about important issues within their communities and act as knowledge centres. The icareindia's YUVA programme provides them the opportunities to join in field exposure visit and community mobilization activities for personality development, behavioural qualities, and developing a sense of social and civic responsibility.

The YUVA programme has two components - YuvaCONNECT & YuvaLEADERSHIP.

Under YuvaCONNECT college students are provided opportunities to join in outreach activities, interacting with the communities to identify their issues, deriving solution leading to the transformation. The grass root level activities and community interactions give youth an opportunity of overall personality development, with better presentation skills making them more industry ready and self employable.

While YuvaLEADERSHIP engages them with ANKURAM and BHAGIDARI programmes. Here the youth are given a chance to evolve as future change makers. The youth who outshine themselves in bringing a change to the socio-economic issues of the communities, are looked upon as role models and their efforts are being recognized with certification.

Strategy

YUVA activities

Mobilizing youth volunteers

The team connects with higher education institutes (vice chancellors, principals and faculties) to mobilize youth, including NSS volunteers and NCC cadets for icareindia’s initiatives. These college students are encouraged to participate in several social development initiatives, such as cultural events, awareness activities, environment protection (plantation drives and thematic workshops) and children’s education in government primary schools (through ANKURAM).

Capacity building

Once the young volunteers become associated with the various initiatives, the icareindia team regularly provides orientation trainings, refresher programmes, thematic sessions and workshops, to encourage the youth to continue their support, learn and develop their skills.

The youth orientation covers several elements of personality development, such as team building, leadership development, community mobilization methods, improving quality of education, extra-curricular activities and sessions on health and hygiene. So far, the icareindia team has conducted 40 such thematic sessions in colleges and received participation from more than 4400 students.

The YUVA programme emphasises on providing field exposure visits for ground-level understanding of the development work going on. The team also recognizes their efforts and provides recognition through certificates by several dignitaries.

Summer internship

The YUVA team identify many qualified youth, including girls want to contribute their time in social services during summer vacation. Such youth are selected into Summer Internship programmes. The programme aims to connect them with various community and social development processes and prepare them as valuable community resources. The internship programme also helps the team in strengthening the ANKURAM programme. So far, the icareindia team has integrated 186 summer interns with 31 communities for various projects.

Important events

Walkathon

The YUVA team organised a Walkathon on November 25, 2015 to connect volunteers from various universities and degree colleges and sustain their enthusiasm. The walk started from LohiaChauraha, Gomti Nagar and ended at Indira Gandhi Pratisthan in Lucknow. More than 1200 students from various degree colleges and universities marched in the Walkathon with musical presentations and slogans to spread awareness on social development. Several media houses covered the event. The District Magistrate of Lucknow, Raj Shekhar led the event, along with youth from NCC, NSS, Scouts and Guides, Nehru Yuva Kendra, Civil Defence Organization and UP Police Band.

Social Partnership

The icareindia team organized an event on social partnership to recognize the scope of improvement in the YUVA programme and increase participation of youth at various levels and to get policy-level support from department of higher education. The event was held on February 20, 2016 at Auditorium of UP Hindi Sansthan in Lucknow. Principal Secretary - Higher Education, Jitendra Kumar; District Magistrate of Lucknow, Raj Shekhar; Chairman of UP Hindi Sansthan, Udai Pratap Singh and Pro Vice Chancellor of Lucknow University,Professor UN Dwivedi were the key speakers for the event. Former Chief Secretary UP Government and Chairperson of the icareindia Advisory Board, Atul Kumar Gupta moderated the sessions.

Post the event, The YUVA team experienced a sudden increase in youth participation as a result of a directive issued by the Principal Secretary- Higher Education, government of UP, to insure better involvement of youth in social development projects.